updated 10:40 am EST, Tue December 28, 2010

Analyst calls most competing tablets 'junk'

Checks at retail confirm high demand for the iPad, says Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair. "Even with a handful of tablet competitors hitting the market, the iPad remained the only game in town in our holiday checks largely because many of the tablets hitting the market are junk for lack of a better word," he writes. Without naming specific models, Blair suggests that most tablets are currently "underpowered, poorly constructed and largely not ready for prime time."

The only significant rival to the iPad has so far been the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a 7-inch Android tablet with some feature advantages, but also some tradeoffs and a higher base cost. Other major competitors are still in development; RIM's PlayBook should ship early next year, while Motorola has yet to even make a formal announcement. Apple itself is expected to ship a second-generation iPad in March or April.

I hope the iPad just crushes the competition

into finely ground powder for trying to rush out unfinished tablets to consumers. That sort of tactic just smacks of outright greed with no consideration at all for end users. Selling a product of poor quality and insufficient testing in order to grab market share is despicable. Companies that do that sort of practice should fail. Most of the iPad rivals really thought they could throw together a tablet project in a few months and rush a product to market in a few months more. They'll see how well that works out for them when their products end up unsold or returned in droves.

the only game for a while

If the current crop of products and vaporware is any indication, the iPad will be the only real game in town for quite a while. The PlayBook doesn't exist yet, M$ has nothing at all, Dell has their thingy that's too big to be a phone but too small to be a tablet, and then there is the Galaxy Tab and the Archos 70. I'm really not aware of any other products, and I don't consider e-readers to be tablets.

I have played with the Galaxy Tab myself. I was not impressed. If it had come out a few years ago, it would probably have been the bee's knees, but the iPhone and iPad happened 1st, and they set the gold standard. The GT it thick, plastic, and smaller (screen) but more expensive than the iPad. For all the nonsense that some spouted about the iPad just being 'a large iPhone'... that moniker really belongs to the GT. With the current version of Android, the GT really is just a large Android phone - same apps, just bigger and more pixelated. No wonder they are proponents of 7 inches, and that's probably too big. Maybe they should have taken Google's advice and not shipped until Android 3 is ready.

I have not touched an Archos device, but I've looked at it online. I can't say anything about the build quality without hefting one, but again, you've only got 7" to play with, and the current version of Android just isn't ready for prime time.

I wish the best for the competition, but only if it's real competition and not some cheap 'me too' c***. At the same time I hope Apple continues kicking some serious booty with iPad 2 - including obvious features such as front & rear cameras, more CPU/RAM/Storage, connectivity options like a SD card slot & USB (outside of the dock connector), a higher res screen (same physical size), and Apple, would it really kill you to add a HDMI port?